Namco Bandai may have figured out that exclusive characters in this day and …

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Namco Bandai has enjoyed forcing gamers to buy multiple versions of the Soul Calibur games to get all the characters since Soul Calibur II was released with Spawn, Link, and Heihachi available on the Xbox, Game Cube, and PS2, respectively. We have known for a while that Yoda and Darth Vader were coming to the 360 and PS3 as well, with each console getting one of the characters. Now it looks like the characters may not be locked down, but Namco Bandai will instead offer the "exclusive" characters across both consoles as downloadable content.

GamersReports broke the story, with a series of shots showing both characters playable on one console. "Just to clarify, the Vader is supposedly going to be a download add-on, that may or may not be charged for, and this comes directly from Namco, not hacked from the disc or fan-hacked or any such sort of trickery," they explain. "It is likely going to work in reverse for the PS3 version with Yoda, as well."

Just a rumor, nothing out of the ordinary, until Namco Bandai contacted the site and had the images pulled. The images were "unauthorized in-development material taken from the game." So the images of Vader playable on the 360 were in fact real, but that doesn't mean the character is coming to the system via DLC. It could simply mean at some point in production Vader was playable on the 360.

Still, the gains from selling the characters across the systems for a few buck each would probably be much more than the small number of people who would buy both games.

Would you pay $5 to pit Darth Vader against Yoda? Of course you would. This remains a rumor, but a very likely one.